JerryLandis

I also just received the Chicago email and logged on here to see if everyone else had too. Looks like I'm not special, damnit!

Anyways, that was nice of them to let us know exactly what's going on and what we should expect come March. Looking forward to an MAPSS admit!

If the person has always gotten by copying other people's work, how is the graduate program to know he's not as intelligent or hard-working as he looks on paper?

I know what you mean about being wary of attending a place that seems to accept just anyone. But every university admits the occasional dud, no matter how selective the place may be. My undergrad institution is pretty competitive, but it has a far lower threshold of acceptance for international students because tuition is higher for those who are from outside the country. This means that in a typical class, you may get a sprinkling of extremely intelligent folk with both very intelligent and very dumb international students (usually Americans). Sure, sometimes it's frustrating to sit in a class with someone who seems to think that Africa is a country, one that exists solely for the purpose of requiring charity bakesales. But the occasional dud doesn't really have much of an effect overall on the quality of education provided. People who aren't really qualified to be there in the first place will not do well, and unless they comprise the majority of the student body, they won't have an effect on how your degree is received by future employers.

If the person has always gotten by copying other people's work, how is the graduate program to know he's not as intelligent or hard-working as he looks on paper?

I know what you mean about being wary of attending a place that seems to accept just anyone. But every university admits the occasional dud, no matter how selective the place may be. My undergrad institution is pretty competitive, but it has a far lower threshold of acceptance for international students because tuition is higher for those who are from outside the country. This means that in a typical class, you may get a sprinkling of extremely intelligent folk with both very intelligent and very dumb international students (usually Americans). Sure, sometimes it's frustrating to sit in a class with someone who seems to think that Africa is a country, one that exists solely for the purpose of requiring charity bakesales. But the occasional dud doesn't really have much of an effect overall on the quality of education provided. People who aren't really qualified to be there in the first place will not do well, and unless they comprise the majority of the student body, they won't have an effect on how your degree is received by future employers.

People who tease those in other majors for working towards "useless" degrees should just be thankful that we're not doing the same subject as they are, and saturating their job market with more useful people.

My father, who is a doctor, constantly mocks me for studying a completely useless subject. When I point out at at least I won't be miserable for my entire adult life like he's been, he just frowns and walks away.

Very few well-respected jobs are useful these days. All the useful people - farmers, people who work in manufacturing jobs, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, etc. are those who are less respected for having received less education, and for being paid less. The one exception seems to be doctors. People pursuing careers in law or business like to sneer about how little money I'll make, but what they accomplish in their careers will likely be just as "useless" as my accomplishments. In fact, they may be even more useless, because at least someone following a more intellectually stimulating career path can have the satisfaction of, well, intellectual fulfillment.

As a society, it seems many of us, at least those with better educations, work in useless professions, getting paid to sit all day and fill out paperwork. So yeah, what I want to do may not be very practical, but unless someone has a truly useful job, I don't bother listening to the criticism.

People who tease those in other majors for working towards "useless" degrees should just be thankful that we're not doing the same subject as they are, and saturating their job market with more useful people.

My father, who is a doctor, constantly mocks me for studying a completely useless subject. When I point out at at least I won't be miserable for my entire adult life like he's been, he just frowns and walks away.

Very few well-respected jobs are useful these days. All the useful people - farmers, people who work in manufacturing jobs, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, etc. are those who are less respected for having received less education, and for being paid less. The one exception seems to be doctors. People pursuing careers in law or business like to sneer about how little money I'll make, but what they accomplish in their careers will likely be just as "useless" as my accomplishments. In fact, they may be even more useless, because at least someone following a more intellectually stimulating career path can have the satisfaction of, well, intellectual fulfillment.

As a society, it seems many of us, at least those with better educations, work in useless professions, getting paid to sit all day and fill out paperwork. So yeah, what I want to do may not be very practical, but unless someone has a truly useful job, I don't bother listening to the criticism.

No, I am not blaming ETS for forcing universities to require the GRE. Obviously I'm annoyed that departments that state pretty clear disinterest in the GRE still require it as a formality in their application. My understanding is that this is generally a requirement of the Graduate School, but that the individual history departments often don't care. I don't blame ETS for that inconsideration on the part of those schools, but I do blame ETS for ripping me off. It does not cost them $20 or $23 or whatever to send scores to a department. It does not cost them $12 to give out a score over the phone. It does not take 6 weeks to send a score to someone in the mail (that's how long my scores took to arrive - clearly they waited as long as they could before sending them, in the hopes that I would buckle and fork out the $12). It also does not cost $50 to reschedule someone's test date when there are plenty of free computers open on another day, or even later that same afternoon. Sure, ripping me off is legal, but it's still wrong and I'm still perfectly entitled to be pissed off about it.

As far as engineering programs are concerned, I don't care because I do not study that subject. I study history, a field in which GRE scores are pretty much useless in determining a person's potential for success. I also don't care about the cable company, because I don't have cable, or even a TV for that matter. So no, they are not ripping me off. Fortunately I was given the choice not to buy into that. Unfortunately, I have no choice but to take the GRE in order to get into grad school.

Lastly, I understand that my only option is to suck it up and take the exam, even though it's a complete waste of time and energy. But it pisses me off that I have to pay for the privilege of wasting my time.

Cost effective my ass. It simply does not cost them anywhere near that much to send test scores. The most obvious example of the company ripping people off is the way that they deliberately send out scores as late as they possibly can, in order to get people to pay to hear their results over the phone for $12. Any fee for that is slightly ridiculous, but $12 to hear the score of a test you have paid to take, and whose results are available but not yet sent, is ridiculous and is clearly done solely for profit. I wouldn't really mind the test being monopoly controlled if they weren't getting away with ripping off thousands of people every year for the sake of a test that most admissions committees seem to consider almost useless.

If scores from different standardized tests that test English language/reading skills and aptitude can't be compared, that's because they don't really do a very good job of measuring those skills in the first place.

No, I am not blaming ETS for forcing universities to require the GRE. Obviously I'm annoyed that departments that state pretty clear disinterest in the GRE still require it as a formality in their application. My understanding is that this is generally a requirement of the Graduate School, but that the individual history departments often don't care. I don't blame ETS for that inconsideration on the part of those schools, but I do blame ETS for ripping me off. It does not cost them $20 or $23 or whatever to send scores to a department. It does not cost them $12 to give out a score over the phone. It does not take 6 weeks to send a score to someone in the mail (that's how long my scores took to arrive - clearly they waited as long as they could before sending them, in the hopes that I would buckle and fork out the $12). It also does not cost $50 to reschedule someone's test date when there are plenty of free computers open on another day, or even later that same afternoon. Sure, ripping me off is legal, but it's still wrong and I'm still perfectly entitled to be pissed off about it.

As far as engineering programs are concerned, I don't care because I do not study that subject. I study history, a field in which GRE scores are pretty much useless in determining a person's potential for success. I also don't care about the cable company, because I don't have cable, or even a TV for that matter. So no, they are not ripping me off. Fortunately I was given the choice not to buy into that. Unfortunately, I have no choice but to take the GRE in order to get into grad school.

Lastly, I understand that my only option is to suck it up and take the exam, even though it's a complete waste of time and energy. But it pisses me off that I have to pay for the privilege of wasting my time.

Fear of having to reapply is a very reasonable reason to dread not being accepted this year! 6 months of application related stress is very different from stressful academic work, because it's extremely demoralizing, costs a lot of money, and is very mysterious and annoying to finagle. I can handle the stress of studying something I'm interested in. But the stress of taking pointless tests, obsessing over stupid meaningless sentences in bullshitty SOPs that might not even be read, editing old pieces of work to fit an arbitrary writing sample word/page limit, and all the while fearing that the person reading it will toss it out in 20 seconds with a sneer, is much different from the normal stresses of student life. I remember taking the GRE and thinking "that better be the last aptitude standardized test I ever take in my life" and looking forward to giving away my prep books. Well, I guess I will still have to get rid of the prep books as the test is supposed to change and I'll have to re-learn a bunch of stupid strategies from new books. But I can't believe I'll have to take it (and pay for it) again!

I've accepted the likelihood of doing an MA next year. I shouldn't complain, it's a great opportunity. But I really just wanted to be finished, and settled, not in limbo for another year or two, with the stigma of having been rejected across the board from PhD programs. It's not nice to think that I ruined the first semester of my final year in college by having to go through all this crap, and I won't even get anything from it. Ah well, at least there are people to commiserate with!

Fear of having to reapply is a very reasonable reason to dread not being accepted this year! 6 months of application related stress is very different from stressful academic work, because it's extremely demoralizing, costs a lot of money, and is very mysterious and annoying to finagle. I can handle the stress of studying something I'm interested in. But the stress of taking pointless tests, obsessing over stupid meaningless sentences in bullshitty SOPs that might not even be read, editing old pieces of work to fit an arbitrary writing sample word/page limit, and all the while fearing that the person reading it will toss it out in 20 seconds with a sneer, is much different from the normal stresses of student life. I remember taking the GRE and thinking "that better be the last aptitude standardized test I ever take in my life" and looking forward to giving away my prep books. Well, I guess I will still have to get rid of the prep books as the test is supposed to change and I'll have to re-learn a bunch of stupid strategies from new books. But I can't believe I'll have to take it (and pay for it) again!

I've accepted the likelihood of doing an MA next year. I shouldn't complain, it's a great opportunity. But I really just wanted to be finished, and settled, not in limbo for another year or two, with the stigma of having been rejected across the board from PhD programs. It's not nice to think that I ruined the first semester of my final year in college by having to go through all this crap, and I won't even get anything from it. Ah well, at least there are people to commiserate with!

PS I'm doing the housewife thing because he pulls the "but you're better at it!" excuse, plus I am very picky about the way things are done and will often re-do something someone else has already "finished" and then nag about it later. And because his mother was too good to him and has given him false expectations of what a woman should be expected to do in the house!

PS I'm doing the housewife thing because he pulls the "but you're better at it!" excuse, plus I am very picky about the way things are done and will often re-do something someone else has already "finished" and then nag about it later. And because his mother was too good to him and has given him false expectations of what a woman should be expected to do in the house!

I just don't see why the whole world needs to know someone's GPA. My friends and family don't even know my GPA. I guess it particularly annoyed me because people would post this stuff up while I was still finishing off my semester and was extremely stressed. To me, grades are like an academic salary, and like salaries, should generally be private. Being excited about doing well is understandable, but generally when I see a post saying "another 4.0 semester, aren't I awesome" it's clearly more intended to rub other people's faces in that person's success.

Cost effective my ass. It simply does not cost them anywhere near that much to send test scores. The most obvious example of the company ripping people off is the way that they deliberately send out scores as late as they possibly can, in order to get people to pay to hear their results over the phone for $12. Any fee for that is slightly ridiculous, but $12 to hear the score of a test you have paid to take, and whose results are available but not yet sent, is ridiculous and is clearly done solely for profit. I wouldn't really mind the test being monopoly controlled if they weren't getting away with ripping off thousands of people every year for the sake of a test that most admissions committees seem to consider almost useless.

If scores from different standardized tests that test English language/reading skills and aptitude can't be compared, that's because they don't really do a very good job of measuring those skills in the first place.

Cost effective my ass. It simply does not cost them anywhere near that much to send test scores. The most obvious example of the company ripping people off is the way that they deliberately send out scores as late as they possibly can, in order to get people to pay to hear their results over the phone for $12. Any fee for that is slightly ridiculous, but $12 to hear the score of a test you have paid to take, and whose results are available but not yet sent, is ridiculous and is clearly done solely for profit. I wouldn't really mind the test being monopoly controlled if they weren't getting away with ripping off thousands of people every year for the sake of a test that most admissions committees seem to consider almost useless.

If scores from different standardized tests that test English language/reading skills and aptitude can't be compared, that's because they don't really do a very good job of measuring those skills in the first place.

Post a bunch of stuff about how horrible the program is, so that someone who has been accepted sees it and decides not to attend...

I'd kill for a waitlist spot right now, if that makes you feel any better.

I haven't heard anything yet. But I bet I'm not really being "ignored," they're probably just sitting there looking in amazement at my application thinking "how could such a wonderful applicant exist?!"

Post a bunch of stuff about how horrible the program is, so that someone who has been accepted sees it and decides not to attend...

I'd kill for a waitlist spot right now, if that makes you feel any better.

I haven't heard anything yet. But I bet I'm not really being "ignored," they're probably just sitting there looking in amazement at my application thinking "how could such a wonderful applicant exist?!"

I'm a medievalist too, but my interests are in the early part of the period, whereas it looks like most of the folks here skew to the later part. Old English and Anglo-Latin stuff, that's my niche, though I do enjoy Middle English literature, particularly alliterative revival works and some of the Christian "mystical" material. I don't get the sense that there are many of us Anglo-Saxonists floating around out there, but I kinda doubt that makes my chances of admission any better. There probably aren't a whole lot of spots open for Anglo-Saxonists either, so it all balances out. I think the long and short of it is that getting into any program is hyper-uber-ultra-competitive no matter what your proposed specialty is. I've been through this before and talked to lots of people about it, and I'm believing more and more that it's all a great big gamble, in which we pay lots of money and devote lots of time to the process and can only hope the stars align and we get admitted and funded (much better odds than the Powerball Lottery, but the same helpless feeling). Unless of course you've got an airtight application, which I most assuredly do not. It's worth a shot though! Good luck to all of you, and here's hoping there's a spot somewhere for all us medievalists out there...

I've decided to be picky, since I am applying right out of undergrad and, if unsuccessful, can always apply again later. I've applied to only 3 PhD programs, not really expecting to get into any of them, but expecting to get into a couple MA ones. I decided to only apply for so-called "brand name" universities, although this was partly because my particular interest isn't very well represented at other universities, so I'd actually fit in better at the higher ranked ones. My logic here is that it's going to be very difficult for me to get an academic job at the end of all this, so I may as well give myself the best possible chance by going to a well-known, highly reputable program. I don't really care where I end up working after my PhD, as long as it's in a nice area - but I'd like to give myself some choice down the line, so I don't think it's outrageous to be picky and snobby about grad programs.

I personally found it kind of embarrassing to apply to such fancy schmancy universities. I was afraid the professors writing my recommendation letters would think I'm delusional and exceedingly arrogant. I don't want to make a fool of myself by getting rejected everywhere, so I try to be as modest as possible when people ask me where I've applied. I hope no one associates me with those people who, upon deciding to apply to grad school, simply apply to the top 10 universities according to the US News & World Report, without even looking up anyone in the department or considering less competitive schools (and then complain about how unfair the system is when they don't get in anywhere). I simply don't want to attend a lower-ranked university, where I don't have as much in common with my advisor, unless I absolutely have to. If I don't get into a PhD program this year, I'll do an MA, then reapply much more widely, maybe even with multiple research proposals that aren't exactly what I'd ideally like to do. But I figured I'd save the money this time around and only apply to my absolute top choices.

Yes, but I am still entitled to an opinion, and people should still listen to what I have to say despite the fact that I am white and middle class, and yes, privileged. Whatever the purpose of AA may be, it is still fundamentally unjust when regarding some individuals. Why does that not matter? I understand that it is important for people of more varied ethnic backgrounds to be in positions of authority, academic or otherwise. But that doesn't require having admissions policies based on race. The crux of the issue stems on economic background - who can afford to live in a wealthy area with good schools, who can afford fancy test prep, who can afford to pay for stupid standardized tests and application fees. Of course there are other factors involved, but I don't think it's ridiculous to say that the center of the matter is economic. If socioeconomic background were taken into account instead of race, black individuals would still benefit. Privilege is all relative. Do you honestly mean to say that a wealthy black student who has attended private schools and never had to hold a job is underprivileged compared to a white student who has grown up poor, has had to work throughout school, and has uneducated parents who can't serve as academic role models? How do you quantify that privilege, and say that student A deserves more leeway in admissions than student B? Is having no role models who are the same race as you the same thing as having no role models at all?

I'm not a grad either but in my experience, the "gunners" are always the people who only skimmed part of the reading but, assuming they somehow already have all possible knowledge inside their heads, feel the need to talk constantly in class and correct people (including the professor). I'm a semi-gunner - prepare too intensely for class, answer and ask a lot of questions, etc., but I'm wary of being seen as a suckup or smartass, so I usually only answer questions if no one else says anything. That said, my only classes nowadays are 5 person seminars, in which the most annoying people are those who sit there with their notebooks all full but NEVER talk - expecting everybody else to dish out their ideas while keeping their own ideas to themselves, and generally making the classroom feel awkward.

What I find even more annoying than these so-called gunners (and sometimes these people are also gunners themselves) is when people feel the need to say "uh huh" or nod their head to every point the professor makes. Yeah, no shit the guy's right, he's A WORLD CLASS EXPERT ON THE TOPIC who has written several books about it! Do these people think that the whole class is sitting there watching them, looking for confirmation of whether or not the person teaching is competent? So annoying. Especially when it's an easy or intro level class in which all the material is obvious or self-explanatory anyways.

I'm not a grad either but in my experience, the "gunners" are always the people who only skimmed part of the reading but, assuming they somehow already have all possible knowledge inside their heads, feel the need to talk constantly in class and correct people (including the professor). I'm a semi-gunner - prepare too intensely for class, answer and ask a lot of questions, etc., but I'm wary of being seen as a suckup or smartass, so I usually only answer questions if no one else says anything. That said, my only classes nowadays are 5 person seminars, in which the most annoying people are those who sit there with their notebooks all full but NEVER talk - expecting everybody else to dish out their ideas while keeping their own ideas to themselves, and generally making the classroom feel awkward.

What I find even more annoying than these so-called gunners (and sometimes these people are also gunners themselves) is when people feel the need to say "uh huh" or nod their head to every point the professor makes. Yeah, no shit the guy's right, he's A WORLD CLASS EXPERT ON THE TOPIC who has written several books about it! Do these people think that the whole class is sitting there watching them, looking for confirmation of whether or not the person teaching is competent? So annoying. Especially when it's an easy or intro level class in which all the material is obvious or self-explanatory anyways.

Yes, but I am still entitled to an opinion, and people should still listen to what I have to say despite the fact that I am white and middle class, and yes, privileged. Whatever the purpose of AA may be, it is still fundamentally unjust when regarding some individuals. Why does that not matter? I understand that it is important for people of more varied ethnic backgrounds to be in positions of authority, academic or otherwise. But that doesn't require having admissions policies based on race. The crux of the issue stems on economic background - who can afford to live in a wealthy area with good schools, who can afford fancy test prep, who can afford to pay for stupid standardized tests and application fees. Of course there are other factors involved, but I don't think it's ridiculous to say that the center of the matter is economic. If socioeconomic background were taken into account instead of race, black individuals would still benefit. Privilege is all relative. Do you honestly mean to say that a wealthy black student who has attended private schools and never had to hold a job is underprivileged compared to a white student who has grown up poor, has had to work throughout school, and has uneducated parents who can't serve as academic role models? How do you quantify that privilege, and say that student A deserves more leeway in admissions than student B? Is having no role models who are the same race as you the same thing as having no role models at all?